Thursday's Big Brother Live Episode Not Airing Live?

Any Big Brother fan knows that Thursday night’s show airs live. That’s when the weekly eviction happens along with the crowning of the new Head of Household. From the looks of it though, this week’s “live” show is going to be pre-taped. Could this have something to do with the Coup d’etat twist? I’m thinking yes.

OCATV.com is the site that posts ticket information for live-audiences for various TV shows. Among the two shows listed for Thursday, August 13th is Big Brother and the time listed is 11:30 a.m. PST. Scroll down and you’ll see BB listed for future Thursdays, all of which are scheduled for 3:30 p.m. PST. One can assume that the early scheduling for this Thursday’s episode means the taping for the show will take place before it airs as opposed to live. While we know there’s a tape-delay to censor out all of the swearing the houseguests inevitably do post-eviction and post-HoH competition, to my knowledge, the “live” eviction has always been mostly live. So why the pre-taping?

Anyone who’s been watching this season knows that Jeff won the America’s Choice vote to hold the power of the Coup d’etat, which gives him the opportunity to remove one or both players from the chopping block and replace them with the houseguests of his choice. All signs point to Jeff using the “magic power” this week and speculation based on comments he’s made is that he’ll take Russell and Lydia off and put Natalie and Jessie up in their place, which will most likely result in Jessie’s eviction. Again though, that’s just speculation. Still, with the episode being pre-taped, it seems the BB producers are preparing for an upset. And by upset, I mean that of some of the houseguests as I’m sure most of the viewers are eager to see Jeff use the thing.

What I’m wondering is, whether this non-live episode is because the producers don’t want to deal with Chima’s wrath when she sees her week as Head of Household completely unraveled in a matter of moments. Or is it to give the two newly nominated houseguests the opportunity to campaign a little bit between the time Jeff nominates then and the voting? Personally, I’m hoping it’s a little bit of both. We all want to see a reaction, even if it has to be an edited one. Chima has proven to be a bit unpredictable on the live show, given her pre-vote speech, most of which had to be censored out during the first week eviction. Maybe pre-taping the episode will be a good thing as we might actually get to see some of the reaction as opposed to the episode cutting to the studio while she has a meltdown. Live or not, I’m thinking tomorrow night’s episode is going to be a good one.